Content Analysis of Donald Trump Tweets

I am no fan of Donald Trump who is bad news for the Republican Party (and US politics more generally) so I hesitate to give his candidacy any more attention. He is entertaining, however, and I thought I'd post this content analysis of his tweets below as a pedagogical example of how one goes about conducting content/discourse analysis, and in particular, gauging "tone" (something I also do for my own research on Congressional statements on the North Korean regime). 

Faith, Christsianity, and the Meaning of Christmas

Christians get bashed for being intolerant, closed-minded, and ignorant. Some of this is deserved by Christians who reflect the values of Christ poorly. But this Christmas season, it was refreshing to see news stories and editorials reflect on the beauty and centrality of the Christian faith and its importance in this broken world.

Michael Gerson's piece centered on German theologian and Nazi resistor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was at the heart of this message. Here's Gerson quoting Bonhoeffer:  "He [God] takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous. And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly. . . . He loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken.”

Gerson then reminds us that amidst the oppression and violence:

In the Christian view, the door was swung open by the incarnation, by a God who somehow became a defenseless child, a refugee, a teacher of good, a victim of injustice, left alone, tired, in doubt, to face a humiliating death. A God who — strangely, paradoxically, mysteriously — at the end felt abandoned by God. A God on our side. 

“God wants to always be with us,” Bonhoeffer said, “wherever we may be — in our sin, in our suffering and death. We are no longer alone: God is with us. We are no longer homeless; a bit of the eternal home itself has moved unto us.”This, despite all our fears and doubts, is Christmas: a God secretly revealed as love.

This article set the tone for an editorial which repeated a frequent theme this Advent season connecting the Syrian migrant crisis to Christ's birth by reflecting on Jesus as a displaced person, his parents fleeing from Egypt upon King Herod's decree to kill all children under the age of  two. I quote the last section of the editorial here which ended in a verse from Matthew 25:35:

 But the word “Christian” is often misused in our times, in a way that implies some allegiance to a particular political party, economic doctrine or set of moral strictures that are not representative of large numbers of true Christians. (The media are often complicit in this confusion.) There is a broader concept of the term, one that is succinct, relevant and all but imperative in this season when we face a humanitarian crisis that tests our character and our compassion. It comes from the Gospel of Matthew and is stated as an ideal voiced by Jesus: “I was hungry and you gave me food.I was thirsty and you game me drink.I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

Finally, last week's Washington Post featured a story headlines, "The quiet impact of President Obama’s Christian faith." Part of the article described Obama's thought process in drafting the eulogy of Rev. Clementa Pinckney following the mass shooting murder at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, SC. The shooter, a white man, was welcomed by black church members to join their Bible study when an hour into the study he stood up and went on a shooting spree. As author Greg Jaffe writes, Obama observed that " the Charleston parishioners had demonstrated their faith when they welcomed the killer into their Bible study. The families of the dead had passed God’s test when they faced down despair and found the grace to forgive." In essence, the President wanted to set the response of Emanuel church members as an example for a polarized nation.  As Obama quoted, “There’s all this goodness and decency and common sense on the ground, and somehow it gets translated into rigid, dogmatic, often mean-spirited politics.”

I don't see President Obama always as a man of faith, so it was a refreshing to hear how he thinks and struggles to apply Christian teaching to his politics. The lesson here (particularly for Christians) is that even if we fundamentally disagree on principles and policy, there's a way to be civil in our discussion and at least attempt to understand the other's position.

Overall, I'm pleased to see a mainstream newspaper like the Washington Post publishing stories which address issues of faith and Christianity without resorting to simple caricatures of Christians.

ISIS and A New Strategy for Bases?

Richard Immerman, who sponsored a conference on US Bases and the Construction of Hegemony earlier this fall, sent us a link to this NY Times article about the Pentagon working to build a string of bases in Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East to address the threat from ISIS and its affiliates. I'm not sure how new this strategy is since plans like these have been in the works since the Bush Administration. However, it appears that the threat of ISIS has given strategic planners renewed interest in coordinating base policies.

Gratitude on Thanksgiving

We moved into our new house on Thanksgiving week, which means we have much to be thankful for this year. Our new home has also given me reason to pause and reflect on the millions of displaced people around the world with no place to call home.

EJ Dionne, in the spirit of thanksgiving, calls on readers cast aside politics and consider humility and gratitude. Quoting from Ecclesiastics 9:11 he speaks of grace, and reminds those with plentiful not to be arrogant, and remember what we have does not necessarily come from our own hands and works, but from Above.  Casting aside politics (but not religion), it's a call to be both gracious and caring.

Obama, Syria, Migration, and Intervention

Initial reactions from a few Republican presidential candidates and handful of Republican governors have ranged from disheartening to appalling. Unsurprisingly Democrats, including President Obama have attacked Republicans and others for refusing to accept Syrian refugees.

Conservatives have hit back, putting some of the blame on the Obama Administration for producing the Syrian crisis., and making a case for intervention. As Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post argues:

Four million Syrians have fled, with even more internally displaced. Half of all Syrians have been forced from their homes.For that, the Obama administration bears some responsibility — and the reasons should be something voters think about in 2016....He withdrew all U.S. troops from Iraq when experts advised that a residual force of 15,000 would help to keep a fragile peace. He bombed Libya to overthrow its dictator but opposed a small NATO training force that might have stabilized the new government. He ordered a limited surge of troops to Afghanistan but soon began withdrawing them on a timetable unmoored to conditions. When Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad cracked down on democracy protesters, kindling violence, Obama kept the United States aloof.

As a result, Hiatt claims we are paying "the price of inaction."

Today Libya is “engulfed in civil war and bloodshed.” In Iraq, having lost leverage and interest, the United States stood aside as the Shiite prime minister turned the U.S.-trained armed forces into a sectarian militia that gave space and impetus for radical Sunnis — reborn as the Islamic State — to reemerge. In Syria, effects even direr than Obama feared from U.S. intervention bloomed in its absence: a wider war, spilling across borders; radical jihadists establishing the kind of statelet that al-Qaeda never achieved; millions of refugees destabilizing not only Syria’s neighbors but all of Europe. 

This argument fits well with an ongoing discussion in my class on the extent to which the U.S. needs to engage in global affairs. Following Chris Preble in  The Power Problem, overextending our reach only does us more harm than good, and does not benefit U.S. interests. We should rely on regional powers and our allies to deal with crises in distant lands, especially if we cannot make the situation any better. Others, believe the U.S. must exercise its leadership and lead by example, recognizing that securing long term U.S interests do require maintaining/managing  global crises.

The One-Child Policy and Teaching About Human Rights in China

China ended it's controversial one-child policy last week, most likely on economic rather than any humanitarian grounds given potential labor shortages and an ageing population. The NY Times provided a timeline chronicling the implementation and effects of the policy. The one-child policy is often associated with forced abortions, compulsory sterilization, infanticide, and other abuses committed by party officials (usually at the local level). Here is one anecdote from the Washington Post:

Katherine Hesse. From NY Times.
 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/31/world/asia/one-child-rule-china.html

His wife was seven months pregnant with their second child when the group of people barged into his home and took her away. He followed them to the local hospital, where — against medical advice and despite his pleadings — they jammed a needle into her belly.“They grabbed my wife’s body like they were grabbing a pig, four or five people holding her hands and legs and head, and injected a shot into her belly,” the man said, asking not to be named for fear of retribution. “Neither my wife nor I signed any consent form.”Ten hours later, she gave birth to a boy, wriggling and faintly crying. But the doctors in southern Hunan province would not even let her hold the dying infant, the husband said. They put the baby in a plastic bag and instructed him to pay a cleaner a small sum to bury it on a nearby hill.

Several other news stories appeared about the horrors of the one-child policy last week. See here, here, and here. Adding to criticism, despite the welcome end to the one-child policy, human rights organizations such as Amnesty International argued that the policy change didn't address the deeper issue of setting limits on child bearing. Coincidentally, I invited renowned activist Chen Guangchen, currently affiliated with Catholic University, to my class the week before China's announcement. Mr. Chen has made it his life commitment to challenge the abuses associated with the one-child policy. Despite this qualified victory, I'm certain he will continue to press on with his activism.

There is no question that this policy has resulted in horrible abuses. A classic example of initially well-intentioned social engineering gone wrong (future labor shortages, uneven gender ratios, inability to support ageing population etc...). But from a teaching standpoint, I am curious to hear the official Chinese stance on the one-child policy. Was there ever any merit to this policy which has been thoroughly tarnished in the West?  Did the CCP intentionally encourage abuse to support policy? Some of the articles I read indicated it wasn't necessarily the central government which enforced abortions, bur rather local party cadres intent on moving up in the ranks. How effective was the one-child policy? Amartya Sen argues more credit is given to the one-child policy than warranted (he attributes declining fertility to other factors such as women empowerment  and new norms of smaller households).

I have one student from mainland China in my Intro to IR class and wondered what was going through his mind during Chen Guangchen's discussion. His presence has made me mindful of how I discuss China in class, especially after inviting Mr. Chen. I wouldn't say it's self-censoring, but I'm reminded that all sides of the debate should be represented, even if China is an easy target to condemn for its human rights abuses.

David Vine's Base Nation

Celeste Ward Gventer reviewed David Vine's book, Base Nation in this Sunday's Washington Post. The book, which was added to my syllabus on the Politics of Overseas Bases and American Empire, basically presents an argument for why overseas U.S. bases do more harm than good. In the bad category, they're expensive, force local people off land, tie the US to dictatorships, result in environmental destruction, corrupt local economies.  

David and I have had several conversations over the years about bases. Although we disagree on several key points about the nature and consequence of US basing, we both agree that a consensus of sorts exists among policy elites regarding basing strategy. However, one point Gventer raises which is absent from Vine's book, and which Stacie Pettyjohn and I address in a working paper evaluating realist and imperial interpretations of overseas base expansion is the relationship between American strategy and bases. Gventer writes: 

Bases are merely a symptom of U.S. strategy, a visible sign of America’s expansive view of its role in the world. Indeed, the bases underscore the relative continuity of American strategy since the end of World War II.

Stacie and I have a slightly different take. US strategy evolves, as reflected by reductions, downsizing, and consolidation of overseas bases over time, and particularly following the 2004 Global Defense Posture Review.

The Iran Nuclear Deal: Historical Lessons

Friday's Washington Post published two op-eds using historical cases to support (Phil Gordon) or counter (Fred Kagan) the viability of the Iranian nuclear deal. Political scientists conduct qualitative case study analysis might be pleased to see such arguments. But taken together, the articles suggest that one may pick and choose historical analogies to prove a point, making the logic of any comparison indeterminate. Not sure if this is good or bad for doing comparative historical case study analysis.

Strange Bedfellows: Code Pink and John Kerry

If you're a politician with conservative foreign policy views, Code Pink is probably your worst nightmare. They regularly go to battle with members of the U.S. government. But it's good to see (and note) that they are not categorically opposed to U.S. foreign policy, and on rare occasion, go out of the way to applaud the actions of the U.S. government. They did this for Sec. of State John Kerry for his diplomatic engagement with Iran (and Cuba) last week. While activists may be ideological, they can also be pragmatic and support the agenda of the very same officials they target week in and week out - so long as the end goals align.

I thought I would share Code Pink's newsletter:

What. A. Week. Whew! CODEPINK has been in action non-stop. Remember George Bush’s axis of evil? We’ve been pushing an axis of diplomacy: Cuba, Iran, North Korea.Cuba: We participated in the historic flag-raising ceremony at the new Cuban Embassy in Washington DC, threw a salsa party [link to news coverage] outside, and promoted the next step: lifting the trade embargo.
Korea: We hosted a Congressional briefing with Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Congressman Charles Rangel, Gloria Steinem and others delegates from Women Cross the DMZ about peace and reunification in Korea.
Iran: We cheered Secretary John Kerry on in a Senate hearing to show appreciation for the nuclear deal he brokered with Iran, debated Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz for at least half an hour about his opposition to the Iran nuclear deal, and hosted Iranian dance lessons in front of the White House with our Iranian friends to “humanize” the debate--and have some fun!

Perspectives on the Greek Euro-crisis

Much of the hoopla on Grexit has passed, but I encountered a WaPo article this week which very

(Petros Giannakouris/AP)

much resonated with my research interests on why the far left (and activists) deviate from mainstream policymakers in their vision of good governance. Both believe they are working for the greater public good - but how they achieve this is driven by widely different ideas about the relationship between politics and economics. This is really a battle of ideas. The chasm between the two are found in the excerpts below.

The new government’s prescription was to tear up Greece’s colossal bailout deals and dare Europe to offer its loans with fewer of the strings that party officials believed were strangling the economy. The strategy may have been radical, but officials thought their proposals were sensible, and they expected that Europe would soon yield. 

In frigid February, when negotiators sat down across from each other for the first time, the members of the Syriza squad, some of whom were still in their 20s, were abuzz with ideas about putting struggling workers ahead of corporate interests.

Their counterparts from European finance ministries and the International Monetary Fund wanted bloodless numbers. What were Syriza’s concrete proposals? And how would they affect Greece’s bottom line? 

Sometimes they were scarcely speaking the same language, as worldviews clashed and tensions started to mount. Syriza’s top negotiators were fresh out of posts as Marxist-oriented economics professors. Their aides were PhD students, steeped in the heady discussions of the academy. The European side, meanwhile, was unaccustomed to hearing rhetoric that had died out of the political mainstream with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

Both the Greek socialist government and the more conservative EU and IMF policymakers believe they are doing what is best to improve the situation. But the key word is believe - and their fundamental beliefs about how best to keep afloat are in sharp contrast to one another.

Most of the commentary from academic colleagues have bashed Germany and the EU in support of Greece.  But to echo other conservative pundits, the country must take ownership and can't just rely on multiple bailouts. As much as Greece wants to blame the EU, they also have to point to their own economic woes. This was basically the attitude of Jong-Wha Lee at Korea University who compared Greece with Korea during the IMF crisis and stated Korea got its act together with less bailout money and more stringent austerity measures. Larry Summer also adopts this view, but also make an appeal to the EU in a more even-keeled approach to avoiding a game-of-chicken doomsday.

Organizing Collaborative Research Projects: Where Do I Begin?

Academic research is a social enterprise. Collaboration - whether through grant-sponsored research projects, conferences, or simply co-authoring – gets us motivated and excited about our research. Collaboration sharpens our intellect and broadens our area of knowledge. But if you’re at a small research university with limited institutional resources, the hurdles to collaborative research are higher. With few research centers on campus, or a lack of research culture revolving around sponsored research grants to do collaborative research, it becomes harder for junior scholars to learn the ropes.

Prior to tenure, I looked into ISA-sponsored workshops and organized a few conference panels in hopes that they might materialize into something further (like an edited volume or special issue). I also secretly hoped that friends from graduate school or more senior colleagues at well-endowed universities might invite me to participate in a joint project. But other than the festschrift thrown for my PhD adviser, no one came knocking. Up until tenure, I had been doing mostly individual research leading to single-authored products.

Post-tenure, then, I made it a goal to get more involved in collaborative research. This meant applying to foundation grants, conducting sponsored research, working with a team of researchers, organizing conferences, and doing an edited volume (despite everyone saying they’re not worth the time and effort). I felt that this was the next step for me in my career. But more importantly, I felt like I was missing out on the social aspect of research and learning.

With that goal in mind, and with help from colleagues and mentors I reached out to, I managed to put together two collaborative projects. The first one on “Re-building Trust” is a relatively small, inter-disciplinary project comprised of scholars mostly from my university affiliated with the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies. It began as an informal brown-bag luncheon to exchange ideas on how trust is conceptualized in different disciplines. We developed into a small working group over the course of the semester, and with my department co-conspirator, are now planning a conference locally for next spring.

The second and more ambitious project is on "The Evolution of North Korean Human Rights Discourse and Advocacy" which emerged somewhat organically. I reached out to a researcher (Jiyoung) from Singapore who was visiting Washington DC.  I remember the excitement of our initial conversation in the balcony of Starbucks trying to map out different networks in the North Korean human rights (NKHR) advocacy movement and the diffusion of NKHR discourse. We talked about co-authoring an article. But in the flurry of emails that ensued over the next two weeks, our potential collaboration of two multiplied into a project of four. We looped in a researcher in Australia (Danielle) whom I had never met, but whose book manuscript I had reviewed two years earlier. We also invited an anthropologist friend of mine and Danielle (Sandra) in Japan I knew from a Korean scholars’ networking program who was coming out with a book on North Korean defectors. From Jan. to June, we exchanged probably over a thousand emails and set up multiple conference calls across four different time zones to pass along research ideas, work on our grant application, and plan out our first workshop in Melbourne this past June with generous funding from the Korea Foundation. We still have a long way to go with this project and have yet to produce any deliverables. It’s hard work, but thus far, doing collaborative work has been richly rewarding. My collaborators have made doing research more fun, and I’ve certainly learned more from them on North Korean human rights than I ever would have on my own. Equally important, I’ve learned a LOT about the world of grants, dealing with offices of sponsored research, and organizing academic events.

Based on my recent (and new) experience, I thought I’d offer some thoughts (I hesitate to say I have any advice based on an n of 2) on organizing collaborative research projects for those who are on the junior-ish end of their career and situated outside a major research institution. I’m sure there are plenty of junior scholars who have already organized conferences or launched major collaborative research projects through large grants. But I write to encourage those who have less access to institutional resources or who are at an institution lacking a strong collaborative research environment (for the record, it’s not that my department colleagues don’t do research. They just tend to go solo). One caveat: although I work at a small research university, I’m based in Washington DC which does make it easier to network with other scholars.

1. Be entrepreneurial. This was advice I heard from a policy school dean on how to survive when your university faces serious budget windfalls. Although he meant apply for outside funding, I took this to also mean being entrepreneurial in the intellectual/academic sense. That is, reaching out to scholars who share potential interests with you (see next point), and mentors who dish good advice.

2. Network. You never know who may become a potential collaborator. One connection may lead to another. A random conversation may open several more doors. One of the reasons why our team of four clicked so well was that even for those who had never met in person, we knew of each other through our existing networks. As mentioned, I knew Sandra from another group. Sandra had roomed with Danielle in Seoul through a sponsored program event. I met Jiyoung in DC for a Brookings conference. None of us imagined during our initial encounter that we would do a project together.

3. But be patient. There’s usually an opportune time to reach out to other scholars so by suggesting to network, this doesn’t mean you start firing off emails to anyone and everyone who writes on your topic. Sometimes it pays to wait and be patient. In retrospect, my APSA and ISA conference panels probably never materialized into anything further because the timing wasn’t right.

4. Seek out mentors outside your department and university. When I first started as an assistant professor, I kept wishing a senior colleague would take me under his/her wings and show me the ropes, or at the very least, have someone whose career trajectory I could emulate. Eventually, I stopped wishing and sought advice on my own elsewhere. After attending a talk by a senior faculty member in the psychology department which overlapped with my research, I asked if he’d be interested in getting together for lunch. That lunch turned into the first of many lunches and his insights and experience on collaboration, grant applying, cutting through university red tape etc….have been invaluable. Although we meet as friends (despite he being emeritus now), whether he sees it this way or not, I look up to him as a trusted mentor.

5. Who makes a good collaborator? A blog post on co-authoring appeared on the Duck of Minerva so those insights apply here. Researchers have different work habits, personalities, professional goals, etc . .  so obviously collaboration does not work well with everyone. A lot of times, a junior scholar will partner with more senior colleagues to “learn the ropes” (i.e. junior colleague does most of the organizing and grunt work; senior colleague attracts people and money). That was the model I had envisioned for myself at the very beginning of my career, and I’ve seen it work. But one thing which I believe helped our group mesh well (other than the fact that we’re all highly interested and motivated in our research topic) despite our different work habits and personalities is that we’re all in similar stages of our career. All of us are relatively junior, but at least have one monograph under our belt and are working towards a second. Thus we work as equals which creates a more open and friendly dynamic.

6. Become allies with the Office of Sponsored Research. I’ve complained about our OSR in the past b/c they set up all sorts of bureaucratic roadblocks simply because they can (but more likely for very good legal reasons). But that’s just the nature of the game. Ultimately, you will have to get their support to successfully complete a grant sponsored research project. OSR wants you to win grants and do great research b/c it reflects well on them and your university. They are there to help you – even if there’s a lot of red tape to cut through.

7. Budgeting.  With foundation grants, the incentive structure is often stacked for over-budgeting. I tend to be a budget conscious person so I actually struggled with this, but as one of my collaborators with more experience reminded me - if you need the money and can justify it, just go for it. However, from our Re-building Trust project, I’ve also learned that it actually doesn’t take much money to get people together and talk about an interesting topic. The three brown bag lunches I hosted on trust was on a budget of under $150 (basically lunch for 10-12 people three times). I ended up paying the last lunch out of my own pocket because there was no funding, but it was worth the cost of a few boxes of pizza to keep the conversation going. Our conference is local with mostly our own faculty, so we anticipate pulling this together by receiving small pockets of money from different parts of the university (for the record, everyone we’ve asked about contributing to our budget have supported our venture since it fosters collaboration with faculty across different units).

8. Be patient, again. Opportunities will eventually come if you really want to pursue collaborative research and keep your eyes open. No need to force it.  A safer career path is setting an early foundation for tenure (i.e. converting dissertation into book or articles; figuring out your own research goals and interests; building a steady stream of publications) before jumping into a larger collaborative project. Of course, collaboration may help generate new ideas and spur greater research productivity and help with tenure recommendation letters. Keep in mind though that producing deliverables out of collaborative research projects may end up taking much more time than anticipated. More people = less control over the intangibles. The point is not to discourage junior faculty from pursuing collaborative research projects early on, but to be patient and not force yourself to initiate collaborative projects for the sake of collaboration.

I still have much more to learn about the grant world, and I’ll only be getting my feet wet with conference planning for the first time next year. Any other comments or suggestions from past collaborative experiences are welcome. 

Academic Dads on the Homefront

Our wild kids in a rare state of calm

My wife seems pretty stressed lately. Mounting work, a long overdue promotion, work travel, looking for childcare, house hunting, and kids running wild at home (ages 3.5 and 1.5) have taken its toll. Although my parents are thankfully visiting from Ohio to help with the kids temporarily, their unsolicited but well-intentioned dose of parenting advice mixed with constant worry about how we’re going to manage everything probably doesn’t help with stress.

So when I read Princeton political scientist Anne Marie-Slaughter’s article, “Don’t worry, working moms: Just leave Dad in charge at home” in the Washington Post, I got a good chuckle (this is another sequel to her “Why Women Can’t Have it All” article from two years ago). That seems to be the default option already in families with young kids when dad is the professor with the flexible schedule and mom has a great full time (and higher paying) career which requires more hours in the office and travel.

Although we put in roughly an equal amount of time into household work and parenting, I sometimes think my wife feels slightly guilty that she’s not doing enough as a mother. Times are changing though with many dual-income parents so I suspect we’ll see more families shifting away from traditional parenting roles to find the optimal work-life balance. So Yoon, hang in there. I know you're doing your best. And kids and housework ...  I say bring it on!

Revisiting Jeju Anti-Base Protests

I'm making a return to my blog after a long absence...

Exactly 3 years ago I was on Jeju Island doing research on anti-base protests against the construction of the South Korean naval base. The paper I’ve written has gone through the grinder at several journals. I agree with much of what critics have to say, and most reviews do mention that I do have a potential argument worth making. I just haven’t figured out a good way to deliver it in 10,000 words or less. I’m using this blog post as a warm-up exercise to retool the article for a non-IR/poli-sci journal.

It’s no surprise that peace activists and national security/foreign policy government officials often clash on a number of issues. But little understood is how or why such differences occur – especially when both sides profess to make claims advancing peace and security. Usually differences are attributed to different political ideologies wrapped around labels such as progressive and conservative.  

Moving beyond such obvious labels, I examine discourse and text to help us understand why activists and policymakers in South Korea came to major blows (literally) regarding the construction of a naval base designed to protect South Koreans. While many reasons exist in favor of or against the naval base – the claims made by local and transnational activists on one hand and ROK government and military officials on the other align fairly neatly along two dimensions. The first is based purely on arguments based on the logic of “realism.”  Bases (as an element of power) are either a source of security or insecurity depending on whether one sees bases as defending the national interest or provoking China and other countries in the region. The government claims the former, activists claim the latter logic. The second dimension focuses on the primary referent of security: states or people. Government focus on the state; activists focus on individual lives at the very local level.

Activists and government officials tend to carry different assumptions regarding international politics. Based on these two dimensions, we can see how far they might diverge on their views about Jeju naval base construction. The figures below (click to enlarge) are ideal types, but you get the picture how, why, peace activists and government diverge sharply in their views about peace and security.

Figure 1: Coding scheme mapping realist and critical worldviews